The vindication of the pater familias

In birding-speak, my dad is a life-lister. I am not. I do not compile my sporadic lists into one master list of all birds previously encountered, because as an amateur (read: lover of) I find it more enjoyable to take in each sighting without frantically looking to see if a lifeless list gets a new check mark on it.

My dad, the life-lister, is always on the hunt for a strange bird. Our birding excursions sometimes go like this:

“Look it’s the extremely rare…”
“No dad, it’s a Red-tailed Hawk.”

“Hey, I think that duck over there isn’t on my list.”
“Really, you don’t have a Mallard on your life-list?”
“You think that’s a Mallard?”
“Yes dad, it most certainly is a Mallard.”

You can call me a sour grape if you want, but I don’t discriminate. My binoculars give equal time to the Red-tailed and the Ferruginous Hawk.

So it’s probably a good thing I wasn’t with my dad at our home church in Michigan this weekend when he spotted a Mountain Bluebird, a bird that should not be in Clyde Township or anywhere in the Great Lakes State for that matter (we may have trash heaps from Canada, but we don’t have mountains).

I can hear myself saying, “No, dad it’s some kind of warbler that you can’t make out from here.”

The female Mountain Bluebird has stuck around and birders (armed with life-lists, no doubt) are traveling from all over the state and as far away as Minnesota to catch a glimpse.

Congratulations on the sighting, dad! I promise to cut you some slack the next time we go out together.

(picture taken by Scott Jennex)